Constructing Nationalism in Iran: From the Qajars to the Islamic Republic - Meir Litvak (2017)
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Acknowledgements

This volume originated in an international workshop on the construction of nationalism in Iran held at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies of Tel Aviv University in June 2013. The book could not have come out without the financial support and backing of the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies, the Faculty of Humanities, the Department of Middle Eastern and African History, and the Daniel S. Abraham Center for International and Regional Studies at Tel Aviv University, Ms. Nazee Moinian and David Eshagian, as well as the Iranian American Jewish Federation of New York and Maccabim Foundation.
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Structure of the book
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The inclusion or exclusion of minority groups has been a central issue in every national movement and nation. In surveying popular images and stereotypes of Jews in Modern Iranian culture, Orly Rahmimiyan argues that the Jews have provided many Iranians with a negative mirror image, an “Other” against whom they could define their own national identity. Most important were religious prejudices, which far-reaching sociopolitical ramifications. In the twentieth century, Western cultural influence introduced themes of European antisemitism to Iran. Although the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 produced a shift from the image of the “cowardly Jew” to that of the “heroic Jew” who was founding a new nation, this too reverted to negative connotations after the 1967 war. Following the 1979 Revolution, the hostile relationship between Iran and Israel negatively influenced representations of Jews.

Addressing the problem from the Jewish perspective, Miriam Nissimov examines the deliberations of Iranian Jews regarding their national identity. Suffering from discrimination and exclusion under the Qajars, Iranian Jews described themselves as ‘Israel’ and the Muslims as gentiles and ‘Ismaelites.’
…https://books.google.com/books?id=3pq8D ... iv&f=false

As they say, “less is more.” So I’ll refrain from commenting on the above study and leave it to the reader (Gentile and Jew) to decide what the root cause(s) of “Engineering Racism” may or may not be.

Mansur wrote:
One of the main pillars, I think, modern political/ideological Israel has been founded upon, is the general belief that there is in the world such a thing as 'antisemitism.' And because modern antisemitism is, in my opinion, a creation of modern antisemitic propaganda, so as such it always entails the question: is the thing real?

Touché, good sir. Very perceptive question.

Trying to trace the origins of the “anti-Semitism virus” is indeed a daunting task.

Majid Rafizadeh“Second, the Iranian regime promotes its anti-Semitic and anti-Israel narrative through various means including the curriculum taught in schools, commentary on social media, news reports and entertainment on television, and nonstop political rhetoric. Its narrative does not stop at the borders of the Middle East. Lately, it has attracted an audience in the West as well.”viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2053&start=165#p2412606

Meir Javedanfar“The eminent Oxford University Professor Homa Katouzian, in his book Sadeq Hedayat: His Work and His Wondrous World, traces this fabrication back to an article published in Iran-e Bastan in 1934. According to Professor Katouzian, this publication, "imitating German antisemitism, fabricated sensational reports of Jewish plots". Not only did this publication reverse the facts in the story of Esther and Mordechai but it also, among other things, distributed reports that Jews were "selling fatal medicine to Muslims". One of the goals of such articles was to emphasise and promote what it saw as the Aryan roots and historical commonality between Iran and Nazi Germany. Such false reports provided the foundation for anti-Jewish Islamist campaigns in the 1940s.”viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1528&start=135#p2412678

I’m a firm believer in creating your own reality and in the “law of opposites.” For instance, if you keep telling yourself “I hope I don’t get into a car accident” over and over again, guess what? You’re going to increase your likelihood of getting into a car accident. A fear-based mentality is destructive to self and society.

IMO, “Jewishness” (as Gilad Atzmon calls it) is a mental illness. Jews are indeed the greatest victims of all time - victims of their own mentality. Their faith in fear has been their Achilles’ heel from time immemorial.

From here on in I’ll refer to Jews as “addicts” and Gentiles as “enablers”.

Addict: an enthusiastic devotee of a specified thing or activity.

Enabler: a person who encourages or enables negative or self-destructive behavior in another.

Self-Pity is a Drug
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Trying to get out of a funk by obsessing about the past [Germany] and the future [Iran] is like trying to defeat an enemy by getting advice from the enemy [the “devil”]. You are going to get the absolute shittiest advice imaginable. It’s a Catch 22.

The other challenge is to not reach for the second-worst choice, which is to get out of self-pity by replacing blaming yourself with blaming someone else; The mother-of-all drugs – self-righteousness.
…https://mentalpod.com/blog-selfpity

Iran has been and continues to be the biggest enabler of the addicts.

Case in point:

Ethnic combination

One of the characteristics of the Iranian society is the existence of different cultures and ethnic groups. Some Iranologists and tourists believe that this cultural diversity has made Iran more attractive. Northern, southern, central, eastern and western parts of Iran have their own specific subcultures due to Iran's vastness. Climatic features influence these cultures to a great extant. Each part of Iran has its specific subculture and because of recent communications between people, some subcultures have been influenced by others.

Ethnic group of Kurds, Lurs, Arabs, Turkomans, Azeris, Bakhtiariz and Balouchis live in full peaceful coexistence. Due to geographical situation, Iran has always been a bridge between the East and the West; while different ethnic communities have crossed this region. Different nations have settled in Iran with different characteristics. Before the Aryan's arrival and their settlement in Iran, some indigenous ethnic communities lived here. Iran's ethnic communities are as follows:

1) Persian (Fars) : More than 65% of Iranian population are Persian (Pars). The Persians are descendents of Muslim or Aryans, who settled in the central plateau during the second millennium BC and called Iran as Pars (Persia).

2) Azaris: The Azari Turks are demographically the largest minority of Iran. Although most of them live in provinces of East Azarbaijan, West Azarbaijan, Zanjan and Hamedan, some others live in other provinces and are also scattered all around the country.

[I’ve yet to meet an Iranian who identifies as an “Azari”. There’s no such thing. We have St. Stalin (in a failed attempt to Balkanize Iran) to thank for “Azerbaijan”.]

3) Kurds: The Kurds are scattered in a vast area of the Middle East, from east of turkey to northeastern Iraq and from some parts of Syria to the west and northeast of Iran. Kurds are the oldest ethnic communities in this geographical region and have been living here from the second millennium A.D.

4) Lurs: They are descendants of Aryans mixed with Kashi or Kasit race. In the course of history, some Arab and Turk groups were intermingled with Lurs but generally speaking, they are a pure race. Constituting 2% of Iran's total population inhabit in Lurestan and Hamedan.

5) Arabs: Most of Iranian Arab populati0n live in Khuzestan and Persian Gulf islands. Arabs living on southern coastal areas, have many characteristics common with the Fars population, and besides the Persian language, they also speak Arabic as well.

6) Qashqais: Most of the Qashqais live in the Fars province, while they migrate during summer and winter to different regions. Similar to many other ethnic minorities, the Qashqais are of Turkish origin.

7) Turkomans: Having common roots with the Turkish ethnic community, the Turkomans constitute a small population of Iran. They live in Turkoman Sahra (a plain in eastern Mazandaran and north of Khorasan with Turkmenistan as neighboring Republic).

8) Bakhtiaris: The Bakhtiaris are settled in Chaharmahal-o-Bakhtiari and some parts of Khuzestan. As one of the oldest ethnic communities, the Bakhtiaris have been among the strongest and most influential ethnic communities in Iranians history.

9) Balouchis: The Baluchis are among few ethnic communities that have preserved their semi-Bedouin lifestyle. Perhaps it is because of the very dry climatic pattern of their geographic area. Balouchis are settled in vast thinly populated deserts covering southeastern extremity of Iran and remote places of West Pakistan. They have famous camel races.
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Christianity

There are two Christian minorities living in Iran since the pre-Islamic era.

1) Armenians: Iranian Armenians live in Azabaijan, Isfahan, Tehran, Khuzestan and other places. They are considered the greatest population of Christian minority in Iran. According to Iran's constitution, they have two representatives in the Iranian parliament, elected from amongst Armenians of north and south. The Armenian prelacy in Iran, has three areas: Tehran and north; south and Isfahan; and Azarbaijan.

2) Assyrians: Assyrians or Kaledanians are the descendants of the ancient Kaledonians, who have been living in Iran since 2500 years ago. During the period of Ashkanian and Sassanid, they converted to Christianity and one of its old religious groups namely Nasturi. Assyrians with 25,000 population, have one representative the parliament. The Iranian Assyrian community has two associations which conduct their artistic, sports, social and political activities. These associations are: Tehran Assyrian Association; and the Orumyeh Assyrian Association.

In addition to above-mentioned groups, Catholicism and Protestantism are other Christian groups living in Iran.

Judaism

About 27 centuries ago, during the period of Achaemenian Cyrus, the Jews arrived in Iran, fleeing persecution in other places. They settled in Shush, Nahavand, Hamedan, Isfahan and Shiraz; after the occupation of Palestine by the Zionist regime, some of Iranian Jews migrated to the occupied lands. Most of Iranian Jews are engaged in economic-commercial activities, just like other Iranians.

Jews in Persia

Iranian Jews are among the oldest inhabitants of the country. The origin of Jewish Diaspora in Iran is closely connected with various historical events.

At the time of Assyrian Emperor, Tiglath-Pileser III (727 BCE), thousands of Jews were brought from Palestine and forced to settle in Media to the northwest of Iran. According to the annals of another Assyrian Emperor Sargon II, in 721 BCE, Jewish inhabitants of Ashdod and Samaria were resettled in Media after their failed attempt against Assyrian dominance. The records indicate that 27,290 Jews were forced to settle in Ecbatana (Hamedan) and Susa, in the west and southwest Iran, wrote Cais-Soas.

[Who forced them to settle?!]

The next wave of the Jewish settlers arrived to escape persecution from Assyrian Emperor Nabuchadadnezzar II. Many were settled in Isfahan around 680 BCE.

Kind Treatment

The conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great--the founder of the second Iranian dynasty-- the Achaemenids, also brought many Jews into the mainland. In 539 BCE, King Cyrus entered Babylon with little resistance. The temple of Marduk, their major deity, was restored. The Jewish slaves in Babylon were freed and permitted to go home.

The kind treatment Iranians accorded their conquered subjects was part of the imperial doctrine led by Cyrus the Great which was influenced by his Zoroastrian faith. The policies of the central administration encouraged autonomy in internal affairs with little intervention from the Iranians. For instance, the Satrap (Governor General) of Judah, which constituted the Fifth Satrapy, had his own local governor in Samaria with the right of supervision over the deputy in Judah.

From 516 BCE, there was no Iranian deputy in Judah. At first, Shabazzar from the ancient Davidic House was the regional leader in Beit-ul-Moqaddas. He was followed by Zerubbabel another Jewish aristocrat. In the 5th to 4th century BCE, the rulers of Judah where also appointed among the local residents. In 458 BCE, the Jew Ezra is appointed the deputy of Judah. The same Ezra had served up to this time as a scribe in the central administration in Susa, the second imperial capital of the Achaemenid dynasty.

Correspondence left by Ezra and his successor Nehemiah, who likewise had been in Susa prior to this, indicates a strong Jewish community, united around the local temple and headed by the high priest. This community had its own organs of self-administration, in whose affairs the Iranians did not intervene.

Gradually, the high priest became the governor of Judah. Semi-autonomous temple communities were not exclusive to the Jews. They existed throughout the Persian Empire. Cyprus, Cilicia, Lycia and other Phoenician cities and principalities in Asia Minor had their own local rulers. Even such remote tribes as the Arabs, Colchians, Ethiopians, Sakai, etc. were governed by their own local chiefs. All kept their religion with little interference from the Achaemenian administration.

Iranian Administration

Iranians occupied the highest positions in the state apparatus. At the same time, they extensively utilized cultural, legal and administrative traditions of the conquered nations. In the Murashu family documents (ancient Babylonia) of the 23 high royal officers, only eight have Iranian names. Various ethnic and religious minorities followed their own legal code in personal matters such as marriage and family law. For example, Jewish settlers of Elephantine (Egypt) under Iranian administration remained monogamous and the husbands did not have the right to take a second wife. Monetary and property disputes were settled and decided by the special “court of the Jews.”

The conquered people were also given land in exchange for taxes and military service. Among these settlers were all groups such as Babylonians, Aramaeans, Jews, Indians and Sakai, etc. In Susa itself, besides the local population and the Iranians, there were large number of Babylonians, Egyptians, Jews and Greeks. There were no restrictions with respect to religious freedom and practices. Hundreds of objects regarded sacred by various ethnic and religious groups are discovered both in Susa and Persepolis.

In the Fortification texts discovered at Persepolis, many foreign deities are mentioned. These cults and their priests received rations and wages for maintenance. In 500 BCE, the priest Ururu, having received 80 bar of grain from the storehouse, exchanged it for eight yearling sheep, of which two were used for sacrifices to the god Adad.

The Iranian religion was against offering of livestock for sacrifices and Prophet Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) banned the practice. However, others were not prevented from practicing such primitive rituals.

In short, freedom of religion, movement, occupation and marriage were guaranteed under the Achaemenian Empire.

Tolerance and Freedom

In the ancient Near Eastern religions, there is a complete absence of the concept of false faith or any form of heresy. Nor there seems to be any notion of racial hatred or any feeling of the superiority of one people over another. Nations conquered would be treated as such, not because of their ethnic makeup or religion. Even captive Jews brought into Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II, retained their faith in Yahweh and practiced their rituals and prospered economically.

Zoroastrian religion was also geared to tolerance, for it made a place for foreign gods as helpers of Ahura Mazda. One Aramaic inscription of the time speaks of a marriage between the Babylonian god Bel and the Iranian goddess Dayna-Mazdayasnish. In this document. Bel appeals to his spouse with the words: “You are my sister; you are very wise and more beautiful than the other goddesses.”

Iranian conquest is greeted with enthusiasm and Iranians are praised and mentioned in the books of Daniel, Ezra and Ezekiel. The Book of Esther tells of the fate of the Jewish Diaspora under Xerxes (486-465 BCE).

According to Jewish textual references, Esther the niece of Mordecai, an assistant to the Iranian emperor, takes the place of Queen Vashti, who is banned, from the palace by the emperor’s order. The Jewish population of Susa is not liked by some and the emperor is persuaded to order their total eradication. Esther intervenes with several Iranian noblemen who pretend to be Jews[?]. The decree is reversed and all are saved. Though the account is not supported by historical evidence, the writer is very accurate in his description of the Iranian court life and costumes. This occasion is still celebrated by all Jews as Purim Festival.

Purim Festival

Purim, which means ’lots’, is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people of the ancient Persian Empire from Haman’s plot to annihilate them, as recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther (Megillat Esther). According to the story, Haman cast lots to determine the day upon which to exterminate the Jews, Wikipedia wrote.

Purim Festival is celebrated annually according to the Hebrew calendar on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar (Adar II in leap years), the day following the victory of the Jews over their enemies. As with all Jewish holidays, Purim begins at sundown on the previous day.

In cities that were protected by a surrounding wall at the time of Joshua, including Shushan (Susa) and Beit-ul-Moqaddas, Purim is celebrated on the 15th of the month, known as Shushan Purim. Purim is characterized by public recitation of the Book of Esther, giving mutual gifts of food and drink, giving charity to the poor and a celebratory meal.

Jewish exiles from the Kingdom of Judah, who had been living in Babylonian captivity (6th century BCE), found themselves under Persian rule after Babylonia was in turn conquered by the Persian Empire.

According to the Book of Esther, Haman, royal vizier to King Ahasuerus planned to kill the Jews, but his plans were foiled by Esther, who was made queen after his previous queen Vashti was dismissed.

The Jews were delivered from being the victims of an evil decree against them and were instead allowed by the king to destroy their enemies. The day after the battle was designated as a day of feasting and rejoicing.

Iranians of all factions have suffered tragedies throughout Iran’s tumultuous history. But iranreview.org (a website that’s partial to the current regime no less) focuses solely and extensively on purported Jewish suffering. What’s wrong with this picture, folks?

I personally don’t suffer from the disease of Goy guilt and refuse to be an enabler because to do so would be bad for the addicts. Enabler-addict codependence is destructive to both parties. The sooner we can acknowledge this destructive phenomenon and get passed it the better for both the addicts and the enablers.

I'm coming from a loving place when I say that I think "Toxic Chosenicity" is the cause of "anti-Semitism".

ICfreely wrote:The conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great--the founder of the second Iranian dynasty-- the Achaemenids, also brought many Jews into the mainland. In 539 BCE, King Cyrus entered Babylon with little resistance. The temple of Marduk, their major deity, was restored. The Jewish slaves in Babylon were freed and permitted to go home.

The temple of Marduk was the Federal Reserve/World Bank/International Monetary Fund/City of London of its day. Seriously, it doesn't take a genius to figure it out, folks.

Flabbergasted wrote:Many of you may be familiar with the tales of the Turkish/Persian wise man (sometimes fool), Nasruddin. The anecdotes are intended to amuse and give food for thought. Here is one of my favorites:

One day Nasruddin borrowed a pot from his neighbor Ali. The next day he brought it back with another little pot inside.
“That’s not mine,” said Ali.
“Yes, it is,” said Nasruddin. “While your pot was staying with me, it had a baby.”
Some time later Nasruddin asked Ali to lend him a pot again. Ali agreed, hoping that he would once again receive two pots in return. However, days passed and Nasruddin had still not returned the pot. Finally Ali lost patience and went to demand his property.
“I am sorry,” said Nasruddin. “I can’t give you back your pot. It died two days ago.”
“Died!” screamed Ali, “how can a pot die?”
“Well,” said Nasruddin, “you believed me when I told you that your pot had had a baby.”

One of the possible interpretations relates to usury. Like interest on a loan, the baby in the story is said to issue from a naturally barren mother. Out of greed, the lender accepts the physically impossible baby, but protests vehemently when confronted with the death of the mother, an equally impossible event, this time invoked in favor of the borrower.

Imagine telling the loan manager at your bank: "Sorry Frank, shit happens. The principal died before it could bear interest."

Another more psychological interpretation of the tale relates to the phenomenon referred to as "double standard". I find the concept particularly relevant to the sociology of scientific knowledge, but that's a topic for another thread.

Sargon, king of Akkad, reigned from 2334 to 2279 B.C. From humble beginnings, he rose to great power, conquering Mesopotamia and parts of Iran, Turkey and Syria. Not only did he found an empire, but he kept it operating smoothly with the innovative use (at the time) of Akkadian bureaucrats installed in every conquered city. Akkadians, who spoke a Semitic language, originated in northern Mesopotamia, while Sumerians held the south. Sargon became the first person in history to create an empire, ruling over a multi-ethnic people. Sargon became a legendary figure; for thousands of years, Mesopotamians told heroic, epic tales of Sargon the Great and the Akkadian golden age.

Scholars have noted that the birth story of Moses is part of a larger motif of ancient literature, namely the exposed-infant motif. The ancients delighted in telling tales of their heroic leaders who at birth were exposed to nature, usually by their parents who, for one reason or another, did not desire their newborn sons. Among the most famous accounts are the stories of Oedipus from Greece and Romulus and Remus from Rome, along with the less well known but equally important story of Sargon of Akkad (in ancient Mesopotamia). There is a difference, however, between the Moses story and the other exposed-infancy narratives, for in Exodus, chapter two, the goal of Moses’ mother is not to be rid of the child but to save him. This occurs elsewhere in ancient literature only in the story of the baby Horus, whose mother, Isis, sought to protect him from his wicked uncle, Seth. The Hebrew and Egyptian stories share this crucial feature, which is lacking in the other parallels, and therefore beckon us to read the former in the light of the latter.

Sargon’s mother was a Priestess (although this point is somewhat debatable: see a different trans.)Moses’ parents are from the house of Levi (once the law is instituted, this is a priestly line)Sargon’s life was concealedMoses’ life was concealed
In order to keep Sargon concealed he was placed in a floating vessel made of rush, and covered in a pitch to seal it from water.
In order to keep Moses concealed he was placed in a floating vessel made of rush, and covered in a pitch to seal it from water.Sargon was cast into the Euphrates by his mother Moses was cast into the Nile by his motherSargon was rescued from the river and rose to prominence Moses was rescued from the river and rose to prominence

Urukagina was the first reformer in world history to learn to his woe the wrath of the money lenders. As a pious devotee of the gods, his power came from the temple. He was a reformer more than he was a military general. His devotion was to his god and to his people. He followed the Mandate of Heaven in righting wrongs and protecting the weak. Those people who did not have land, he took the land of the moneylenders and returned it to the poor and the disenfranchised. Those people who had been sold into bondage by the moneylenders, he freed them and returned children to their parents and wives to their husbands. He took away from the money lenders their debt slaves and much of the property that they had swindled. And he confiscated much of the lands that they had stolen. He returned all of this to the people. And he did all of this with the blessings of the priests and the gods of Lagash.
...
Every trade guild had its own patron deity. The brick maker's god was Kulla . The love goddess Inanna (later named Ishtar[Esther]) was the patron deity of brothels and beer taverns. The patron deity of the moneylenders was the Moon God, Sin. This was not a bright god like Shamash, the Sun God, who was limited to only half the day. The Moon God lived in both the day and the night sky and was mysterious and full of secrets. His "day" began in the evening and he reigned throughout the night, a time when debt-slaves were captured and properties confiscated. The Moon God was the god of both the city of Ur in Sumeria and the city of Harran in Akkad. Both of these were major guild cities of the moneylenders and important cross-road cities for the merchants. Both Ur and Harran were the central terminals of the major trade routes. So, they also had located at each, the major temples for Sin , the Moon God, the god of the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] .
…Lugalzagesi had provided the merchants and moneylenders the means of regaining their property by over-throwing Urukagina, the reformer king of Lagash. But greed is a demon that is never satisfied just as a fire is never satisfied by adding more fuel. The huge quantities of gold and silver that had been looted from the temples of Lagash gave the moneylenders new ideas for acquiring even more. This vast new source of bullion flowed into their businesses from the soldiers and laborers who had looted this wealth during Lugalzagesi's victories. For the sacking of temples as direct participants, the moneylenders could plead innocence before the gods. It was through their businesses that they gained all of this loot. Silver and gold made available to the people as war booty meant that the people had more silver to buy the grain, the garments, the beer, the prostitutes, the slaves and the luxury items that were the stock-in- trade of the merchants and moneylenders. War was very profitable to the winners. Profit meant power.
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For the greedy moneylenders of Kish, Lugalzagesi had been a king for too long. His twenty- four year reign had allowed him to assemble all of the cities of Sumeria into one, single empire. This was the first time that all of Sumeria had been united in over one thousand years. But Lugalzagesi was a Sumerian and he was satisfied with being the king of Sumeria. He had been financed by the moneylenders of Sumeria to destroy Urukagina of Lagash and to eliminate the Semitic king of Kish before turning south and conquering all of Sumeria. He was happy with his victories and was not ambitious for further conquests.
…
Sargon kept secret his war preparations. With sufficient financing and access to the tamkarum [merchant-moneylender] trade routes, he did not need to do business with the Sumerian cities in the South for his supplies but could buy directly from the Semitic cities far to the north and west, away from the knowledge of Lugalzagesi. Directly to the west of him on the Euphrates was the city of Mari which was a major manufacturer of copper and bronze implements and weapons. After all, this was still the Bronze Age and such weapons could be bought through the tamkarum [merchant-moneylender] monopolies at Mari without raising suspicions. Once his army was armed and trained, Sargon struck swiftly, attacking Uruk and dragging away Lugalzagesi like a dog in a neck stock to be tied to the gates of Nippur.
…Sargon the Great was a brilliant military leader as well as an innovative administrator. Sargon was the first king to unite all of Mesopotamia, both the north (Akkad) and the south (Sumer) under one ruler. His Akkadian empire became a prototype for later kings...

Federal Reserve: The Real Cause Of 1930s Great Depression
by Marvin Dumont

History books falsely teach students that Great Depression of the 1930s was caused by the stock market crash of 1929, as well as, failure of businesses. It’s a dangerous myth that doesn’t blame the real culprit: The Federal Reserve.
…

AboutApollo

Apollo all-in-one currency has fixed supply and therefore has 0% inflation. This feature is important for protecting APL users’ buying power.

Apollo is the first all-in-one currency that gives users the ability to perform any blockchain-related task (offered by mainstream cryptos) in a single platform. With the launch of Olympus Protocol 2.0 APL offers the best privacy in the industry by obfuscating your physical location and transaction destination. (See announcement and YouTube video.) A forthcoming 3.0 version will add more advanced privacy tech such as Advanced IP Masking, Private Ledger, and Decentralized Exchange.

Wiser to steer clear of ass-backward eristic idiocy (that would derail this thread) and stay on topic.

Israel: The Ultimate Racist Colony. The Jewish Nation State Law
By Dr. Elias Akleh
Global Research, July 24, 2018

After 70 years of Israeli colonization of Palestine and discrimination against the Palestinians treating them as subhuman goyims, Israelis; the racist self-proclaimed holy people, light on all nations, have just crowned their racist ideology with a new law; Jewish Nation-State Law, that was passed on July 19th.

This law defines the Zionist Israeli colony in Palestine as a state that belongs exclusively to the “Jewish people”. It totally disregards and cancels the citizenship of the indigenous Palestinians numbering more than 50% of all the recent population and whose roots in the land go back thousands of years in history even before the alleged existence of ancient Israel.

This law considers the “land of Israel” (all historical Palestine) as the historical homeland of the Jewish people, where they can fulfill their alleged cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination that is unique and exclusive to the Jewish people. It stipulates that al-Quds (known as Jerusalem), complete and united, as the capital of Israel. It grants automatic citizenship to world Jewry and encourages all Jews, and only Jews, to immigrate to Israel. To accommodate these new immigrants this law views the expansion and development of new Jewish settlements (colonies) as a national value. To make this Jewish Zionist Israel more unique and more exclusive than the rest of the world this law paints it with Hebrew language and Hebrew calendar as the official language and calendar of the state.

All these privileges for the Jews come on the expense and nullification of the rights of the indigenous Palestinians. This law violates international laws, UN resolutions, peace process and political agreements, and most importantly human morality. It totally negates the existence of Palestinians; the rightful owners of the land. It cancels the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their own homes and towns as guaranteed by international laws. It negates their history, their language, their culture, their religion and their humanity. What is most dangerous is that it paves the way for more ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and more theft of their land to build more Jewish colonies.

In short, this law is a flagrant discrimination against Palestinians. This Jewish discrimination has a long history that started 100 years ago and gradually grew in intensity until it culminated with this Jewish National-State Law. Israel does not allow Palestinians to buy or rent any land because the Israeli government claims the whole Palestine as Jewish owned granted by divine land deed. Palestinian towns are considered contaminants on sacred Jewish land that need to be extricated. Thus, Israeli governments pursued a policy of graduated demolition of Palestinian homes and villages. The recent demolition of Palestinian Khan el-Ahmar village last week is the latest example. Palestinian existence is tolerated as long as they are perceived as slaves; animal souls born in human bodies whose sole existence is to serve the god’s chosen people; the Jews.

Israel has finally admitted what all the world has known since the beginning of its illegal colonial establishment as the ultimate racist apartheid in the whole world. Israel is a colonial project based fundamentally on the racist religious faith of Judaism with a genocidal real estate racist god, who favors one alleged nation over the rest of his creations to be the light on nations and assigns them a promised piece of land as a homeland. Let us remember that Judaism is a religion not a nationality, and that “Jewish people” is just a religious farce, for modern Jews came from different nationalities, and Israeli Jews are Jews, who adopted the Zionist colonial ideology.

This law openly declares that Israel is an apartheid regime that is worse even than the old South African apartheid regime. It clearly exposes the fallacy that Israel is the “only democracy” in the Middle East for in actuality Israel has been the only racist and Jewish exclusive state in the Middle East. The region does have some Arab democratic regimes such as that of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt where government is elected in as a democratic fashion as the American elections. Unlike Israel that considers itself Jewish only, these Arab countries have citizens who are members of different religions and creeds and are from different ethnicities.

This Israeli law embodies the ugliest form of racism far worse than the Nazi’s motto of “Deutchland über alles” (Germany above all).

Racism is the most fundamental building block of Zionism/Israel and is an intrinsic characteristic of the Zionist colony so much so that Zionist Jews do not just discriminate against all goyims; non-Jews, but they also discriminate against different factions of Jews among themselves, and segregate each faction from the others; Ashkenazim, Haredim, Sephardim, Mizrahim, and black African Jews, Oriental Jews, Russian Jews European and American Jews. This intra-racism is so strong that white Jewish Israelis regularly commit hate crimes against black Ethiopian Jewish Israelis and refuse to have them live in the same neighborhood or shop in the same grocery stores, or work in the same office, or even buried in the same grave yards. This racism is implanted early in the minds of their children in public schools, where black Jewish Israeli children are segregated from white Jewish Israeli children.

This intra-racism is not restricted to individual Jews, Jewish gangs, or certain Jewish Israeli neighborhoods or cities, but it is also a governmental policy adopted by governmental as well as civil and private institutions. The well-publicized cases of forcibly injecting Jewish African immigrant women with birth control on their first entry to the state, building walls isolating Ethiopian communities from white communities, the dumping in trash of donated black Jewish blood believing it is religiously unfit for white Jews, the theft of thousands of African Jewish new-born babies from their newly immigrated mothers claiming them as born dead while giving them to white Jewish families, among other similar cases of extreme intra-racism and discrimination are examples of racist policies perpetrated by the Zionist governments.

This racism and segregation breed hatred and violence that is encouraged in the Israeli educational system since kindergarten classes. Students are taught that the Jewish race is a special race, a holy race, light upon all nations; god’s chosen people, while the Others are defiled races.

This racist apartheid law is the major premise in the Zionist colonial ideology. The Israelis did not dare to declare it in the past for fear of global reprimand. But now with the American support at its zenith with Trump’s administration declaring al-Quds (Jerusalem) as the Israeli capital, and with the timid objections from global communities, who seem to be unwilling to hold Israel responsible for its many crimes, Israeli leaders are emboldened to despise all international laws and to pursue their brutal racist colonial project of Greater Israel in the Middle East.

It is still not clear to many nations and their political leaders that the ultimate goal of this Greater Israel Project is not just to colonize and control only Palestine, but also the whole Middle Eastern region as its second phase.

"If thou lend money to any of My people, even to the poor with thee, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor (nosheh), neither shall ye lay upon him interest" (Ex. 22:24). "And if thy brother be waxen poor and his means fail with thee… Take no interest of him or increase; but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon interest, nor give him thy victuals for increase" (Lev. 25:35–37). "Thou shalt not lend upon interest to thy brother: interest of money, interest of victuals, interest of anything that is lent upon interest. Unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon interest; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon interest; that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all that thou puttest thy hand unto…" (Deut. 23:20–21). The prohibition on taking interest in Exodus and Leviticus seems to be confined to the poor in straits and not to extend to moneylending in the normal course of business, but the deuteronomic prohibition clearly applies to all moneylending, excluding only business dealings with foreigners.

DEFINITION

The biblical term for interest is neshekh (Ex. 22:24; Deut. 23:20), but in the levitical text it occurs alongside tarbit or marbit (25:36–37). In the Jewish Publication Society translation (1962) neshekh is rendered as "advance interest" and tarbit or marbit as "accrued interest" – the one being deducted in advance, the other being added at the time of repayment. This is only one of many interpretations that were made of the terms neshekh and tarbit from the time of the Mishnah (BM 5:1) onward and by no means the best one. One commentator regards neshekh as accumulating interest and tarbit as a fixed sum of interest that never increases (Ramban to Lev. 25:36). The most authoritative view is that of Rava, that there is no difference in meaning between neshekh and tarbit (BM 60b); but while Rava maintains that the Torah used two synonyms in order to make the prohibition of interest a twofold one (ibid.), the better explanation etymologically would be that neshekh, meaning bite, was the term used for the exaction of interest from the point of view of the debtor, and tarbit or marbit, meaning increase, was the term used for the recovery of interest by the creditor (Solomon Luntschitz, Keli Yakar, Be-Ḥukkotai, Lev. 25:36).

The prohibition on interest is not a prohibition on usury in the modern sense of the term, that is, excessive interest, but of all, even minimal, interest. There is no difference in law between various rates of interest, as all interest is prohibited.

2:33 - “We send guys like me over there so they don’t come here. We send guys like me over there so that we keep pressure on them from having the operational space and timing to commit another 9/11. You have to understand that these people over there wake up every single day trying to plan another 9/11…”

1) Guys like Dan Crenshaw go over there and terrorize innocent people who had nothing to do with 9/11.

2) The terror victims who are forced to flee their homelands go to whatever country that will take them in. Over the last 20 years Iran has taken in over 2 million refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebenon, Palestine,Yemen, etc.

3) The refugees who come to America or go to Europe are labeled “invaders/terrorists” by the locals.

Polish Refugees in Iran during World War II
...Polish refugees in Iran

Starting in 1942, the port city of Pahlevi (now known as Anzali) became the main landing point for Polish refugees coming into Iran from the Soviet Union, receiving up to 2,500 refugees per day. General Anders evacuated 74,000 Polish troops, including approximately 41,000 civilians, many of them children, to Iran. In total, over 116,000 refugees were relocated to Iran. Approximately 5,000–6,000 of the Polish refugees were Jewish.

Danial Synagogue (Persian: کنیسه دانیال‎) or Daniel Synagogue (Persian: کنیسه دانیل‎) also known as Polish Synagogue (Persian: کنیسه لهستانی‌ها‎ - Kenise Lahestāni-hā) is the only Ashkenazi synagogue in Iran. It is located at 30 Tir Street (formerly known as Ghavam Al Saltaneh Street), in Tehran.[1]

It was mainly used during the time of the Second World War by Polish Jewish refugees. With the increase in Jewish refugees from Poland in 1940, Iranian Jews decided to build a specific Ashkenazi synagogue next to the Haim Synagogue.[2]

When the Danial Synagogue was first opened it could hold sixty people. Three Ashkenazi-designed Torahs had been brought from Poland and were used in the synagogue. After the Iranian Revolution, most Ashkenazi Jews left Iran, so the synagogue is now mainly used by Iranian Jews.

Ettefagh Synagogue - After the Second World War, with the installation of a new government in Iraq, the situation of the Jews in Iraq deteriorated. After prominent members of the Jewish community such as Laura Khozoee were arrested, and Shafiq Adas, a successful Jewish businessman, was hanged, many Iraqi Jews decided to emigrate. Some left for Israel while others decided to settle in Iran. They reached Iran with the help of Kurdish Jews and many arrived at Khorramshahr. With the help of Harun Abdolnabi, a prominent Jew in Khorramshahr, some were able to go to Tehran and obtain legal documents. From 1946 to 1951 many Iraqi Jews moved to Tehran, while others moved to Europe and the United States. At this time, with the help of Iranian Jews, the Iraqi Jews decided to create a cultural center. In 1946 Meir Abdullah Batson bought a large piece of land with an area of over 5,000 square metres (0.50 ha; 1.2 acres) near the University of Tehran, in Ghods Street. He separated a piece of land of over 865 square metres (9,310 sq ft) and turned it into a synagogue, with the help of Saleh and Davood Mashi, Heskel Haim, and others. The community wanted to name the synagogue after Meir Abdullah, but the government did not accept it because he was a foreign citizen. Hence the name "Ettefagh" was chosen, and it became the main place of gathering for the Iraqi Jews of Tehran. The synagogue architecture was designed in the style of Babylonian architecture, and it was fitted with the most advanced cooling system of the time. Most of the Torah scrolls in the synagogue were brought by the Jews who came from Iraq, and a Babylonian Talmud in Aramaic script was dedicated to the synagogue. Many Iraqi Jews emigrated from Iran during the Iranian revolution, and today only a few families (mainly Iranian Jews) still use the synagogue.

Iran’s Jewish community is the largest in the Mideast outside Israel – and feels safe and respected In a nation that has called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the Earth, the Iranian government allows thousands of Jews to worship in peace and continue their association with the country founded more than 2,500 years ago.
Kim Hjelmgaard, Sep. 1, 2018

TEHRAN, Iran – In a large room off a courtyard decorated in places with Islamic calligraphy and patterned tiles featuring intricate geometric shapes and patterns, men wearing tunics, cloaks and sandals recite morning prayers.

At the back of the room, three women sit together on a bench, hunched over ancient texts. Scarves cover their hair, as required by Iran’s religious law. Birdsong floats into the cavernous space as the incantations grow louder and more insistent.
This is a synagogue. In Iran.

In a nation that has called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the Earth, the Iranian government allows thousands of Jews to worship in peace and continue their association with the country founded more than 2,500 years ago.

"We have all the facilities we need for our rituals, and we can say our prayers very freely. We never have any problems. I can even tell you that, in many cases, we are more respected than Muslims,” said Nejat Golshirazi, 60, rabbi of the synagogue USA TODAY visited one morning last month. "You saw for yourself we don’t even have any security guards here."

At its peak in the decades before Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, 100,000 to 150,000 Jews lived here, according to the Tehran Jewish Committee, a group that lobbies for the interests of Iranian Jews. In the months following the fall of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Iran’s second and last monarch, many fled for Israel and the United States.

It was a dispersion precipitated in part by the execution of Habib Elghanian, who was then one of Iran’s leading Jewish businessmen and philanthropists. Elghanian also headed the Tehran Jewish Committee and had ties to the deposed shah. He was killed by firing squad after being accused by Iran’s Islamic revolutionaries of spying and fundraising for Israel.
Few Jews remain

Today, 12,000 to 15,000 Jews remain in Iran, according to the committee.

It’s a small minority in a nation of 80 million people. But consider: Iran is home to the Middle East’s largest Jewish population outside Israel.
The number of Jews in Iran has plummeted since the 1979 Islamic Revolution

And, according to Golshirazi and other senior members of Iran’s Jewish community, they mostly enjoy good relations with Iran’s hard-line, theocratic government despite perceptions abroad that Iran’s Islamic rulers might subject them to harsh treatment.

"The Muslim majority in Iran has accepted us," said Homayoun Sameyah Najafabadi, 53, who holds the role once held by Elghanian, chairman of the Tehran Jewish Committee.

"We are respected and trusted for our expertise and fair dealings in business, and we never feel threatened," he said. "Many years ago, before the royal regime of Pahlavi, by contrast, if it was raining in Iran, Jews were not allowed to go outside of their houses because it was believed that if a non-Muslim got wet and touched a Muslim it would make them dirty."

Najafabadi said it may be difficult for Jews and others outside the country suspicious of Iran’s treatment of religious minorities or its views on Israel to accept, but after the execution of Elghanian, Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s first supreme leader, deliberately sought to improve relations between Jews and Muslims in the country for the nation’s long-term stability.

He added that Jews, who have been in Iran since about the eighth century B.C., used to be scattered all over the country but are now largely concentrated in Tehran and other big cities such as Isfahan and Shiraz. In all, he said, Iran is home to about 35 synagogues.

Najafabadi said most Jews in Iran are shopkeepers, although he said others work as doctors, engineers and in other highly skilled professions.
There are no Jews, however, in senior government positions. There’s only one Jewish representative in the country’s 290-member Parliament. His name is Siamak Moreh Sedgh.

Sedgh, 53, said one of the reasons Jews in Iran are able to live peacefully is that they consider themselves Iranians first – and Jews second.
"We’re not an entity outside of the Iranian nation. We are part of it. Our past and our future. I may pray in Hebrew, but I can only think in Persian (Farsi, Iran’s language)," said Sedgh, who is also a surgeon at a hospital in central Tehran, where USA TODAY spoke with him.
Crucially, that affinity extends to the question of Israel.

"I don’t think Israel is a Jewish state because not everyone in Israel lives according to the teachings of the Torah. This is what Jews in Iran believe," Sedgh insisted.
He acknowledged that it was somewhat ironic that Iran, arguably the biggest foe of Israel, was also the "biggest friend of the Jewish people."

Sounding more Iranian than Jewish, Sedgh said he disagreed with President Donald Trump’s decision this year to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv because "Trump can’t just change a capital city that according to international law and the United Nations is an occupied city."

The final status of Jerusalem has long been disputed. Palestinians want a capital of an independent Palestinian state in East Jerusalem; Israel views the city as its true capital.

"Trump is a coward who has lost his humanity and forgotten about spirituality. He wants to destroy large parts of the world only for the benefit of a small group of capitalists," Sedgh said.

On Tehran’s bustling streets, Jews are not very visible, partly because there are so few of them. USA TODAY did, however, spot a few men wearing kippahs as they hurried off to work in the morning. They did not appear to attract any second glances from Iranian men in business suits, others in traditional Muslim dress or women sporting hijabs and chadors.

Other minority groups in Iran include Arabs, Armenians, Baloch people (who live near Pakistan, in Iran’s southeast), Christians and Kurds. Open Doors USA, an organization that tracks persecuted Christians worldwide, estimates there could be as many as 800,000 Christians secretly living in Iran. It says Christians in Iran are routinely subject to imprisonment, harassment and physical abuse for seeking to convert Muslims. USA TODAY did not encounter any Christians in Iran.

Outside the Yousef Abad Synagogue, the entrance via the courtyard was unprotected, and it was easy to walk straight in. That's unheard-of for Jews in Europe, where Jewish schools, institutions and places of worship receive extra security amid a spate of attacks.

"What you see there (for Iran’s Jews) is a very vibrant community," said Lior Sternfeld, a Middle East historian at Penn State University who in November will publish a book on modern Jewish life in Iran. "A community that faces problems – but it's Iran, so problems are a given."

Difficulties and discrimination

Still, rights groups and experts believe Jews in Iran do face discrimination. Najafabadi, the committee chief, conceded that in some instances, Iranian Jews have had trouble getting access to the best schools with their Muslim peers.

In other cases, treatment of Jews has ended in brutal violence.

In 1998, Ruhollah Kadkhodah Zadeh, a Jewish businessman in Iran, was hanged by the authorities after being accused of helping Iranians Jews emigrate. Two years later, 10 Jews in the southern city of Shiraz were jailed after they were accused of spying for Israel.

Then there’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s former president, who drew international attention when he repeatedly denied the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were murdered.

Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian Jew, says life has improved for Jews under Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Javedanfar left the country for Israel in 1987 as a teenager and now teaches classes on Iranian politics at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv.

Javedanfar said, for example, that Jewish children in Iran are no longer required to attend school on the Sabbath, the traditional day of rest and religious observance among Jews that falls on a Saturday but is a regular workday in Iran.

"At the same time, the regime continues to hold Holocaust cartoon contests that are pretty anti-Semitic," he noted, referring to a provocative annual exhibition in Iran that mocks Jewish suffering while claiming to challenge Western ideas about free speech and Holocaust taboos.

He quickly pointed out: "The regime is not too concerned about its Jews as long as they don’t become involved in politics and don’t say anything positive about Israel."

Golshirazi the rabbi, Najafabadi of the committee and Sedgh the parliamentarian all stressed they were speaking truthfully and not trying to distort their views of life in Iran for Jews out of fear of government persecution. They also said Jews in Iran often enjoy extra social freedoms that Muslims do not, such as the ability to consume alcohol in a private setting.

The few Jews in Iran are unlikely to leave.

In 2007, the Tehran Jewish Committee rejected an offer by Israel’s government to pay each family of remaining Jews in Iran up to $60,000 to help them leave the country.

"I can tell, you are thinking I am afraid," Golshirazi said when USA TODAY pressed him on that point. "But I have been many places visiting Jewish communities. Iran is the best for us."

Yusef Abad
…People residing there are, generally expected to be, of upper middle class, well-off, and prestigious. The area is located in north central part of the city, and is served by Valiasr Street, as well as Kordestan and Hemmat Expressways.
…
The locality is one of the major neighborhoods in Tehran with the highest population of Persian Jewish people. Others are Oudlajan, Gisha, Sheikh Hadi, and Gorgan.
...
Yusef Abad is host to a few synagogues, also one of the largest in north of the city, named Yusef Abad Synagogue (Persian: کنیسه یوسف آباد , Hebrew: בית הכנסת יוסף-אבד).

UnintendedConsequencesIn an excerpt from a new history of 20th-century Iran, the neglected story of the Jewish revolutionaries who participated in—or adapted to—the sweeping changes of 1979
By Lior B. Sternfeld
…

Jews were active in all-Iranian organizations—such as the Tudeh—and, of course, in sectarian, explicitly Jewish groups, such as the AJII. However, Jews participated even in almost exclusively Muslim organizations, such as the Mujahidin-i Khalq (the People’s Mujahidin of Iran)[MEK]. The Mujahidin-i Khalq was established by members of the intelligentsia—engineers, doctors, university students, and the intellectual elites of the nationalist opposition factions. This organization employed a fascinating combination of Marxist and Islamist discourse in its articulation of a revolutionary ideology. The Mujahidin-i Khalq was one of the key opposition organizations in the 1970s until the revolution.
…https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-a ... nsequences

Is Tehran spying on Southern California? Feds say O.C. waiter and ‘Chubby’ from Long Beach were agents of IranMelissa Etehad Jan. 13, 2019

Authorities allege that two Iranians were operating in Orange County as spies on behalf of Iran. One of the men, Majid Ghorbani, worked at Darya, a popular Persian restaurant in Sana Ana, for more than 20 years.

They seemed an unlikely pair of spies.

The older man, Majid Ghorbani, worked at a posh Persian restaurant in Santa Ana’s South Coast Plaza Village. At 59, he wore a thick gray mustache and the weary expression of a man who had served up countless plates of rice and kebab.
…
Despite the pair’s disarming appearance, U.S. authorities allege they were operating in Orange County as agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran — an accusation that has alarmed many in the local Persian community because it suggests tensions between the U.S. and Iran have spilled over into Southern California.

The men’s goal, authorities say, was to conduct surveillance on Israeli and Jewish facilities in the U.S., and to collect information on members of the Mujahedin Khalq, MEK, an Iranian exile group that has long sought to topple the regime in Tehran and enjoys newfound support among members of the Trump administration.
…
“The MEK in recent years has spent time and money building political capital,” said Daniel Benjamin, director of Dartmouth College’s Center for International Understanding. “Bolton has been the MEK’s most dedicated long marcher.”
…
“There is a sense of fear in the Iranian community that the regime in Iran are sending people to USA and keeping track of movements,” said Mike Kazemi, an Irvine immigration lawyer.

For those in the Persian community who are against the Islamic Republic but also disagree with the Trump administration’s policies toward Iran, the escalation in tensions has been disconcerting. They say it serves as a reminder of how both American and Iranian officials view members of the Iranian diaspora with suspicion.

“We are in the middle of two hard places,” Kazemi said.

Indeed!

Yet others in the community say they are refusing to allow geopolitics to interfere with their day-to-day lives.

Nasrin Rahimieh, a professor of humanities at UC Irvine, said she understands how recent developments might cause some Persians to feel scared of being too visible.

Throughout her career, Rahimieh said, she has been chastised for either appearing pro-Islamic Republic or anti-Islamic Republic.

Any Iranian expat who dares to speak up inevitably has to deal with questions like:

-Are you pro or anti Islamic republic?
-Are you pro or anti Royalist?
-Are you with America or Iran?
-Are you an Iranian spy?
-If you love Iran so much, then why don’t you just go back?

I left Iran in 1986 at the age of nine; at the height of the Iran-Iraq war. If I were to go back to Iran I’d be asked questions like:

-Why did you abandon your county/countrymen during wartime?
-Why have you decided to come back now and what are your intentions?
-Are you pro or anti Islamic Republic?
-Are you pro or anti American imperialism?
-Are you pro or anti Royalist?
-Are you an American spy?

Suspended animation…

But those experiences have left Rahimieh emboldened to speak out against what she said is the fear-mongering rhetoric present in today’s political environment.

“There is such rabid desire to show Iranians as bad actors and as bad agents that it’s had the opposite effect on me,” Rahimieh said. “To paint all Iranians with the same brush is something that needs to be protested.”

How Iranian-Jewish Women Started a Writers' RevolutionBenjamin Ivry January 22, 2015
…
In another telling chapter in “The Jews of Iran,” Nasrin Rahimieh, professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine, asserts that fiction too can be a form of “bearing witness to the collective history of Jewish Iranians.” Rahimieh points to the prolific author Gina B. Nahai, whose romantic “Cry of the Peacock” (1991) describes the destinies of Iranian Jewish women over centuries, including that of an 18th-century soothsayer named Esther: “She was a Jew, born of a mother who had worked and died in the service of the Sheikh’s family, inherited by him and doomed to spend her youth and desire as a slave without a face, until she was too old to work and they sent her back to die in the ghetto.” Nahai’s highly colored prose infused with exoticism makes explicit the racism that Iranian Jews have long confronted…

…As Rahimieh eloquently argues, Nahai and Sofer’s decision to create fiction inspired by the sufferings of their fellow Jews results in “alternative histories that signal the path to what is to come.” These authors, and others like them, rather than merely mourning the past,have set the groundwork for a cultural future.

Migration in early 1950s
The founding of Israel in 1948 coincided with increased Jewish emigration from several middle-eastern Nations including Iran.[7] Anti-Jewish sentiment increased under prime minister Mosaddeh,[7] and continued until 1953, in part because of the weakening of the central government and strengthening of the clergy in the political struggles between the shah and prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of ... arly_1950s

Stability in the 1950s, to instability in the late 1970s
After the deposition of Mossadegh in 1953, the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was the most prosperous era for the Jews of Iran. Due to political instability in the 1970s and prompted by the Islamic Revolution, most Iranian Jews fled the country.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of ... late_1970s

Abrishami Synagogue (Persian: كنيسهء ابريشمى‎ Kanise ye Abrishami, Hebrew: בית הכנסת אברישמי) is a synagogue in Tehran, Iran. It was built in September 1965 in the upper-middle-class neighborhood of Kakh Shomali (currently N. Palestine Street).https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrishami_Synagogue

Main exodus late 1970s to 1990s
The tensions between the loyalists of the Shah and Islamists throughout the 1970s initiated the mass-migration of Iranian Jews, first affecting the higher-class. Instability caused thousands of Persian Jews to leave Iran prior to the revolution - some seeking better economic opportunities or stability, while others feared the potential Islamist takeover.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of ... s_to_1990s

I’ll leave it to the reader to fill in the blanks as to the causes of the recurring theme of exodus.

To clarify, if I’ve given the impression that I’ve personally had my heart broken by a Jewess, that’s not the case. No offense meant but although I’ve socialized with Jews, I’ve never even dated a Jewish girl. That said, I think the pagan/Jewish myth of Esther/Ishtar/Inanna has plagued the Middle East (from Egypt to Iran) since time Immemorial.

Covering a span of topics that range from the influence of Iranian Jews in government, law, and the military to the hardship of centuries of marginalization, persecution, and forced conversions, contributors to the volume examine the tomb of Ester in Hamadan, the life of Prophet Daniel and his tomb, the contribution of Iranian Jews to Jewish theology, law, and thought in the Babylonian Talmud, Judeo-Persian literature, the notion of nejasat (religious impurity), clothing, makeup, Judeo-Persian dialects, Jewish Persian carpets, and the life cycle of birth, Bar Mitzvah, wedding, and burial customs. The forced conversion of the Jews in Mashhad, the history of the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Iran, the involvement of Iranian Jews in the Zionist movement, leftist politics, and sports, and the role of women in the family are also examined in detail.

Chacham Hakim Nour-Mahmoud Nehourai, entitled Nour-ol-Hokama, i.e. “The Light of the Physicians”, was born in 1809 C.E., the 1190 (or 1188) of the Persian calendar, to a religious Jewish family of Kashan, Iran.

His father Hakim (Doctor) Haroun Kashani was a well-known traditional doctor and an erudite scholar of the Jewish community of Kashan during the reigns of Mohammad Shah and the early years of Nasseraddin Shah, two of the Qajar kings. Hakim Haroun had eight children from his marriage, all of whom followed the father’s suit and practiced medicine. As time would prove, their descendants to date would continue to pursue medicine and pass it on to their children as a family profession.

Chacham Hakim Nehourai first learned the medical sciences from his father and other traditional doctors of the time. Then, having gained much needed experience and remarkable achievements in his hometown, he left Kashan for the capital Tehran, accompanied by his servant Yousef, to further his education and to expand his services on a far broader scale.

It is said that on his way to Tehran, Chacham Hakim Nehourai arrived at the religious city of Qom, where a large crowd caught his attention. The pregnant daughter of a senior Islamic cleric had died of asphyxiation in the public bath, and according to an old local tradition, her still body was being carried in a large procession attended by relatives and other acquaintances, first to be revolved around the Mausoleum of the Prophetess Masoumeh in Qom, i.e. to practice a tavaf, before the burial would be performed. Hakim Nehourai sent words to the Ayatollah, that he was a Jewish doctor from Kashan, and that he sought permission to examine the body of his daughter for the last time. The Ayatollah agreed without hesitation and proclaimed that as a doctor, he was allowed the intimacy.

Upon examination, Chacham Hakim Nehourai noticed signs of life in the still body. He announced that the Ayatollah’s daughter was alive and that she had to be treated immediately. He ordered the body out of the coffin, had her laid down on a bed, and began examining the young woman more closely. As he carefully studied the body, he discovered a tumor in the patient’s chest that obstructed the breathing. He opened the chest, took out the tumor, freed up the space around the respiratory system, and allowed her to resume breathing freely. The young woman, thereto close to actually die from hypoxia, gradually regained her normal bodily functions. Thus, both the mother and the fetus inside her were saved. The Hakim then ordered some sweet sorbet, which he made the patient drink with some herbal medicine that he had on him.
The locals saw the incident as a miracle performed by a Jewish doctor, who had just revived the dead before their eyes. The news of the miracle spread around, and the highly Islamic city of Qom was awash in joy. The Ayatollah was beyond himself in ecstasy, and he asked the young doctor to stay in his town. Chacham Hakim Nehourai, intent on traveling to the capital, agreed to stay there until the young woman would fully recover. During that time, he attended to the pregnant woman and treated many other patients. His mastery of medicine made the Ayatollah bestow upon Hakim Nehourai the title of “Nour-Mahmoud”, literally “The Praised Light,” or “The Light of the Praised.” (“Mahmoud”, meaning “Good Natured”, was one of the titles accorded to Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam.) The cleric further announced that the Hakim and his servant were not najess, i.e. ritually contaminated, that they were permitted to even go to the well or the water reservoir, and that no one would stop and protest them. Yet, shortly afterwards, the Hakim’s servant got into a quarrel with a man at the well, was badly beaten by him, and was insulted by the crowd. Chacham Hakim Nour-Mahmoud Nehourai who could not bear such misguided mentality and ideological pressure, decided to leave Qom without further delay. He met with the Ayatollah and asked his permission to leave for Tehran, although he promised that he would be honored to serve him again in the future when the need be.

In Tehran, Chacham Hakim Nehourai settled home and office in an alley that would become known by his name. The house was located on the northern side of the Oudlajan Neighborhood, “the Jewish ghetto of Tehran”, at the Tekkieh Reza-Gholi Khan, next to the practice of Etemad-ol-Atebba Hakim Bashi, i.e. “The Traditional Doctor Trusted by His Peers.” Given his reputation as a skilled and erudite doctor, Hakim Nehourai succeeded to advance far and fast in no time by his mastery of the profession, but also by his kind manners toward the public and his consistently good relations with colleagues. For years, the Chacham Hakim Nehourai practice, considered the great medical center around, was also seen as a prominent center for medical education, where many of the famed doctors of the time learned medical sciences from this erudite figure.

Before long, Hakim Nour-Mahmoud Nehourai’s reputation had reached the royal court of Qajar, and he was invited to begin work as the special doctor to the court. Thereafter, still serving the public at large, he joined his Jewish colleagues Hakim Moshe “Moses” and Hakim Yehazkel “Ezekiel”, from the Jews of Khansar, to treat the aristocratic elite, the officials, the entitled, and the princes of Qajar in the court of Nasseraddin Shah.

Chacham Hakim Nour-Mahmoud’s fame spread far among all classes, and Nasseraddin Shah’s particular attention toward him increased, so far as the Hakim became subjected to the jealous contempt of his many competitors, the doctors of the court, some of whom eventually made an attempt on his life. At one given opportunity, in the quiet of the night, the co-conspirators found the Hakim alone, and he was stabbed in the abdomen several times by dagger. Despite the intensive wounds and severe bleeding, however, the conspiracy remained unfulfilled, and Hakim Nour-Mahmoud Nehourai survived the assassination. Even as the Hakim was bleeding, he asked his eldest son Ayoub “Job” to sew his abdomen wounds with the help of Mirza Hassan Khan so they could heal more swiftly. And awhile afterwards, Hakim Nehourai reappeared at his office before the surprised eyes of his jealous competitors.

Highly respected by his compatriots, Chacham Hakim Nehourai was also revered among the foreigners living in the capital for the erudite personality and skilled doctor that he was. When the first Iranian Postcards were published, they bore photos of him as Nour-ol-Hokama, “The Light of the Doctors”, while treating patients or teaching students. Several surviving stamps also bear photos of him by Antoin Sevruguin. According to the customs of the time, Chacham Hakim Nehourai was highly appreciated for his meritorious and humanitarian services in medicine, and he was honored by precious prizes and official awards from state personalities. The most prominent of these awards was a carpet that depicted the storied events of the Torah, Genesis in particular, which was bestowed on the Hakim by Nasseraddin Shah, the king of Qajar. This carpet is preserved today at the Beth Tzedec Museum, in Toronto, Canada.

Chacham Hakim Nehourai had a mastery of Hebrew, Arabic and Persian. He was well-versed in the subject of religion, beginning with the Tanach, the complete Jewish Bible, besides being an outstanding scholar of the Jewish theology. He had a particularly comprehensive knowledge of the laws of the Torah, and he had done extensive research in Kabbalah. He also knew Koran very well, as he could recite all its chapters by memory. Furthermore, he had mastered the 14-voume Book of Law of Avicenna written in Arabic, a book which he taught, and upon which he wrote many commentaries. As an artist, he was a master of the Persian Calligraphy, especially in the two styles of Shekasteh (Broken) and Nasta’ligh (Cursive). Also a poet, at times he wrote prescriptions in rhymed verse!

Chacham Hakim Nour-Mahmoud Nehourai was considered a genius of medicine in his time. As a doctor, he played a significant role in the evolution of modern medicine in contemporary Iran, which secured him a special niche in history.

He was the first traditional doctor in Iran to be familiar with Acupuncture, the methods of which he applied in many cases to treating patients. Most all of patients cured by the acupuncture thought of Hakim Nour-Mahmoud’s treatment as a kind of miracle, since back then few people knew about this science.

Still a young student in Kashan, learning and practicing medicine under the tutelage of his father, Chacham Hakim Nehourai married a relative of his. The couple brought six children to the word, three sons, namely Ayoub “Job”, Aflatoun “Plato”, and Homayoun, and three daughters, Khanom “Lady”, Keshvar “Country”, and Touba.

His eldest son, Hakim Ayoub Nehourai, was born in Kashan and died at the age of 44 in Tehran. Dr. Loghman Nehourai, Ayoub’s son, followed his father’s steps and practiced medicine. Also for more than three decades, he chaired the Tehran Jewish Association, besides that he served terms as the Representative of the Jewish community in the National Parliament.

Chacham Hakim Nehourai’s second son, Hakim Aflatoun Nehourai, was one of the outstanding traditional doctors of the Iranian Jewish community, as well.

Chacham Hakim Nehourai’s third son, Hakim Mirza-Agha Khan Filsouf Homayoun, a graduate of the famed Dar-ol-Fonoun school, practiced medicine for more than 60 years. Following Chacham Nehourai’s death, he followed his father’s suit and continued to serve as a doctor of the royal court. Mirza-Agha Khan was considered one of the famed doctors of the country during the reigns of three Qajar kings, Mozaffareddin Shah, Muhammad-Ali Shah, and Ahmad Shah Qajar.

Furthermore, the children and the descendants of Chacham Nehourai’s daughters, that is, Khanom, Keshvar Khanom, and Touba Khanom, chose to follow their ancestral profession, earned advanced degrees in medicine, and achieved high positions in their field. To date, they remain well-known as outstanding physicians, both in Iran and around the world.

Chacham Hakim Nour-Mahmoud Nehourai, a.k.a. Nour-ol-Hokama, died in the year 1899 C.E., the 1278 of the Persian calendar, at the age of 90, in the early years of the reign of Mozaffareddin Shah Qajar.

The territorial issue is the linchpin of the negotiations that Israel must…

To begin resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, one must…

The Arabs must…

The Arab regimes must…

The Arab states must…

This obsession must…

But one thing must…

This prerequisite, which is now demanded in nearly every corner of the Arab world, shows the distance that the Arabs must…

This is not surprising if one considers the enormous anti-Israel propaganda that has been directed at the Arab and Moslem masses, in which 150 million people have been endlessly told that a tiny country in their midst has no place under the sun, that it must…

It cannot be dismissed as posturing because, if left unchallenged, it contaminates the views of the pragmatists and realists among the Arabs and further inflames the passions of the “Arab street” of which the realists must…

Surely after the Gulf War the Arab leaders must…

And just as surely they must…

Bibi’s delusional “peace” plan (peppered with 40+ musts) unsurprisingly portrays the “Jewish” state as the perennial victim and the rest of humanity as victimizers. Satan’s little helper just can’t help himself. Surely he must know that the writing’s on the wall…

The official U.S. government line is that Iran is the main country responsible for the 9/11 attacks in America. On 9 March 2016, a U.S. civil court ruled that Iran must pay to some victims of the 9/11 attacks $10.5 billion in fines, and the Obama Administration had no comment, so the U.S. press ignored the verdict almost totally. But this verdict was the only official U.S. court ruling thus-far about state-sponsorship of the 9/11 attacks, 16 years after the event. It was therefore huge news on 9 March 2016 — it created a precedent, for the U.S. government to allege that Iran had caused the 9/11 attacks and is consequently ‘the number one terrorist state’ (as Israelis have long claimed). But it received very little coverage at the time.
…
Trump is continuing George W. Bush’s policy.

Mehochko wrote, on page 52:

Iran’s response to 9/11 surprised many observers: spontaneous candlelight vigils in Tehran mourned the American dead, the mayors of Tehran and Isfahan sent condolence messages to the people of New York City, and Iranians observed a moment of silence before a national soccer match. The Iranian government issued a strong statement condemning the terrorist attacks, and President Khatami publicly expressed his “deep regret and sympathy with the victims.” During his November visit to the UN General Assembly, Khatami went so far as to request permission to visit ground zero in order to offer prayers and light a candle for the victims.
…https://www.globalresearch.ca/iran-and- ... ks/5592643

The presstitutes conveniently glossed over that fact. Instead, they showed old footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets of Jerusalem, falsely claiming that they were celebrating America’s demise.

But I suppose we should chalk that up to “unintended consequences” as well.

P.S.

Ajam Media Collective was launched in 2011 by a group of graduate students who wanted to challenge simplistic representations of the region in the Western media and bring the complex debates happening in academia to a wider audience. So much of the discussions about the region happening in academia were locked behind paywalls and were hindered by a limited focus on the Arabic-speaking Middle East, a focus that too often erased the myriad connections between and across modern borders and contemporary geographical categorizations (like the term “Middle East” itself, a colonial invention). Since then, Ajam has grown to include editors based at several universities who among them share backgrounds in diverse fields like filmmaking, music, art, and journalism.

Ajam Media Collective is an online space devoted to analyzing society and culture across the lands we refer to as Ajamistan. We imagine this landscape as spanning from Turkey in the East across Iraq, the Caucasus, and Iran and into Central Asia, Afghanistan, and South Asia. These lands are united by a shared Persianate culture and heritage; throughout the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal courts that ruled these lands from the 1500s until the 18th and 19th centuries, Persian was an official language of culture and poetry and thus provided the basis for a shared cultural idiom to emerge that has been referred to as the Persian Cosmopolis.

Even though colonialism and the emergence of nation-states has cut this land up and reshaped local notions of identity, traces of Ajamistan can be seen everywhere today: in the Persian words that pepper daily speech, the religious practices and spaces informed by Persianate religious idioms, the obsessive love of poetry and mysticism that cuts across faiths, and shared pleasures like the waterpipe (referred to by the Persian words shisha, nargile, or ghelyan) and backgammon.

Ajam is at its root a slur in Arabic, denoting otherness. We, however, see this otherness as an opportunity, not a badge of shame: By being both a part of the Arab-Islamic world and yet somehow peripheral to it, the Persianate cosmopolis of Ajamistan has developed traditions and worldviews that are both informed by that world and yet do not shy away from freely adding from everywhere else as well.
...https://ajammc.com/about/

Disclaimer: IMHO, although I respect their perspectives, the grad student's articles are often skewed due to the fact that the political/social science curriculum in all universities have been skewed in favor of you know WHO. Rebuttals from older Iranian's in the comments sections are worth a read.

Bottom line; in spite of all the efforts to demonize us as terrorists and pit us against each other, there are binding ties among Persians, Arabs, Armenians, Turks, etc.

Pariahstate
A pariah state (also called an international pariah or a global pariah) is a nation considered to be an outcast in the international community. A pariah state may face international isolation, sanctions or even an invasion by nations who find its policies, actions, or its very existence unacceptable.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pariah_state

Iran becoming a pariah state, says US official
A senior US official [RobertEinhorn] on Monday said the situation over Iran's nuclear programme was becoming increasingly worrying and an urgent diplomatic solution needs to be found.
2:25PM GMT 05 Dec 2011https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldn ... icial.html

Russia vs. America
America vs. Iran
Iran vs. Russia

It never ends. Left to their own devices, these despicable culture vultures will not only continue to destroy countless lives but ultimately they’ll divide and conquer themselves. Currently, they’re trying to create strife between Iran and Russia by bringing up past wars and whatnot.

Regardless of government posturing, Russian and Iranian people share deep cultural ties that cannot be broken despite the nonstop efforts of the Real Pariah State!

Five Fallacies in Netanyahu’s Remarks during Meeting with Putin about the Myth of Haman and Esther
Ali Omidi, March 13, 2017

“Perhaps there are people among you, who would remember that when they were put on trial and exposed to a small danger, they started crying and shed tears in front of the judge and even brought their children into the court to buy sympathy from the judge. However, I (Socrates) will not do that though I am exposed to the greatest of dangers. I have relatives of my own, because as Homer says, I was not born out of an oak tree and did not spring out of a rock, but I have arisen from among humans and even have three boys, one of whom is a grown-up and the two others are still children. However, I will never bring them to this court in order to have your sympathy.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, March 10, 2017, at the Kremlin. During the meeting, he claimed that Iran was promoting “Shia Islamic terrorism” and warned that as long as Iran is present in Syria, there would be no peace in the Arab country.

According to media reports, during the meeting, Putin congratulated Netanyahu on the occasion of the Jewish holiday of Purim. The Israel prime minister, for his part, said, Jews celebrate Purim because Persia (present-day Iran) “did not succeed in destroying Jews.” He also alleged that even today, “Iran – the heir of the Persians – has similar designs: to wipe out the state of the Jews.[1]” In response, the Russian president said those developments belonged to 2,500 years ago and “we live in a different world.[2]” He then asked Netanyahu to talk about the existing problems in the region. It must be noted that the narrative that Jews have of the myth of Haman, who was a top advisor to the Iranian monarch Xerxes I, and Esther, the Jewish wife of the king, is that Haman was behind a conspiracy to make the king order the killing of all Jews in ancient Persia. However, Mordecai, a Jewish advisor to the king, was helped by Queen Esther and while preventing the king’s order from being implemented, caused the king to order the massacre of Haman and his whole family.

In these remarks and also previously in an address to US Congress, Netanyahu has used, at least, five fallacies in his historical narrative. Fallacy is an outwardly creditable argument, which is used to prove a wrong claim or refute a right one. In fact, fallacy is some form of manipulating primary and secondary parts of an argument to reach one’s own desired conclusion. Logic experts have recognized scores of fallacies in human oral and body languages, which cannot be discussed here. However, five discernible fallacies can be detected in Netanyahu’s anti-Iran allegations and the way he narrates the myth of Haman and Esther.

The first fallacy is anachronism. In this fallacy, a person analyzes developments of the past on the basis of criteria and values of the modern times. Even if the original story is right, Netanyahu analyzes it on the basis of current criteria and discourses. There was no such concept as anti-Semitism in ancient Iran. However, he is trying to analyze developments of that time, including the myth of Haman and Esther, on the basis of today’s discourses and values, which condemn anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism, however, is a phenomenon, which mostly belongs to the history of Christianity rather than Iran, Islam and so forth.

His second fallacy is historical resembling. In historical resembling, current developments and personalities are simulated on the basis of historical developments and personalities. Even if the myth of Haman and Esther were true,it would be totally incorrect to draw an analogy between Iran's current leaders and Haman. Iran and its people have undergone thousands of developments in the course of history, which render such a comparison basically wrong.

Straw man fallacy is the third fallacy, which can be detected in Netanyahu’s remarks. In this fallacy, the person in question does not provide an argument against real allegations of the opposite side, but he rather attributes easily refutable claims to the opponent and then refutes them. Netanyahu does not pay attention to Iran's official positions through which the Islamic Republic stresses the self-determination right for Palestinians via their freedom-seeking movement and calls for a referendum on the fate of Palestine as well as an end to occupation of Palestinian territories. Instead, he accuses Iran of anti-Semitism as well as planning a possible Holocaust and nuclear destruction of Israel and tries to show that positions, which have been attributed to Iran, are all negative. Although some Iranian officials may go to great length on the issue of Palestine, the official position of the country, which has been emphasized mostly by the country’s presidents and foreign ministers as the highest-ranking officials in Iran's foreign policy apparatus, is by no means at odds with international law.

The fourth fallacy is mythologization. A myth is basically distortion of realities and although it may not be a fallacy, it may turn into a fallacy if politicians want to exploit it. Humans are usually very inclined toward mythologizing historical personalities and developments and it is through this way that their group identity takes shape and becomes meaningful. In the Western and Jewish cultures, the myth of Esther and Haman is being publicized with strong vigor and it has a large audience base. People like Netanyahu take advantage of these myths to achieve their own political goals.

The fifth fallacy is appeal to emotions. This fallacy is used when one side has no clear argument to reject or prove a proposition and instead, tries to take advantage of other people’s emotions and sentiments in order to make them take sides with his fallacy. As has been indicated in the first paragraph of this paper, Plato believes that what Socrates has said in his own defense is a good example of this fallacy. Socrates had emphasized that he did not want to take advantage of sympathy and pity of his audience. Such fallacy is not always necessarily expressed in words. Socrates brings an example about taking children to court. Crying, using high tone when speaking in order to gain influence over the audience, and malingering in a soccer match in order to deceive the referee are all examples of fallacious behavior. Here, in the myth of Esther and Haman, and also with regard to the issue of Holocaust, Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians play the victim card in order to attract the attention of the audience and finally make them confirm their fallacy. In this case, Netanyahu has also used historical resemblance fallacy and has tried to draw an analogy between the present-day Iran and the Nazi Germany.

1:17 - …but for me, this was a personal mission of discovery. I wanted to know more about Iran. It was clear to me I didn’t know much about Iran and I’m a travel writer I’m supposed to know about these things and my neighbors didn’t know much about Iran either. For a lot of us history stopped [in 1979-81] with the embassy uh crisis and the hostage taking and all that kind of thing and we’ve been stuck in this “they’re the enemy”…

2:00 - I didn’t know how people [in Iran] would receive us and we went there and we learned a lot. It really bothers me that I believe fear is being used against us in our society and I just – time and time again I’ve found when I’m afraid of a place, I go there and I find it’s not that scary and what I believe I find is the fundamental humanness of different countries on this planet.

10:15 - …and then they’d say, “Welcome!” And usually they’d say “I like America” or something like this and then we’d talk politics and they’d tell me what they think about our president... but honestly I didn’t know what to expect and I have never been in a place where, ironically, being an American was such an asset. It was thoroughly an asset to be an American individual there OK? So make of that what you will…

12:27 - Well, in Iran they don’t want their little girls growing up to be like Britney Spears or Paris Hilton. That’s what terrorizes these parents…

That said, being an Iranian-American individual in Iran is anything but an asset. Ironies abound.

Iran, Israel and Destiny
Gilad Atzmon • October 8, 2019
…
Israel has seriously mismanaged its conflict with Iran. For over a decade, Israel has relentlessly threatened and sought to intimidate Iran. Iran’s response has been effective: slowly but surely Iran encircled the Jewish state.
…https://www.unz.com/gatzmon/iran-israel-and-destiny/

Israel's Last War
Gilad Atzmon • November 6, 2019
…
In 2011 Israel was still confident in its military might, certain that with the help of America or at least its support, it could deliver a mortal military blow to Iran. But this confidence has diminished, replaced by an existential anxiety that might well be warranted. For the last few months, Israeli military analysts have had to come to terms with Iran’s spectacular strategic and technological abilities. The recent attack on a Saudi oil facility delivered a clear message to the world, and in particular to Israel, that Iran is far ahead of Israel and the West. The sanctions were counter effective: Iran independently developed its own technology.

Former Israeli ambassador to the US, and prolific historian, Michael Oren, repeated my 2011 predictions this week in the Atlantic and described a horrific scenario for the next, and likely last, Israeli conflict.

Oren understands that a minor Israeli miscalculation could lead to total war, one in which missiles and drones of all types would rain down on Israel, overwhelm its defences and leave Israeli cities, its economy and its security in ruins.
…https://www.unz.com/gatzmon/israels-last-war/

According to Gilad, Iran has developed a missile delivery technology that can completely evade Israel's "iron dome" and whatnot. He claims this new secret technology is "20 years ahead" of the rest of the world. And of course without continued support from America Iran will...

Tehran 90210: Rich kids of Iran live out of the reach of the Revolutionary Guard

The sports cars, swimming pools and booze-soaked parties of Iran's young and wealthy is a world away from what we have come to expect from the Islamic Republic.
Daniel Batini|Published: 10.11.14 , 09:31

At first glance, they look like flashy rich kids from any Western country – hanging out by the pool with whiskey glasses in hand, dancing up close to one another in minimal attire, and driving around in luxury cars to the sound of bouncy music.

But these rich kids don't live in Beverly Hills or a prestigious London neighborhood, or even Herzliya Pituach. They live, party and fill the social media websites with photographs of ostentatious wealth, plus a healthy dose of exposed body parts in skimpy bikinis, in fundamentalist Iran – and they do so without fear of the country's Revolutionary Guard Corps or the ayatollahs' so-called thought police.

This is the Iran you don't know about, the Iran that hides under the cover of stringent modesty and behind a radical regime that fanatically persecutes homosexuals, severely punishes anyone who breaches the boundaries of modesty, encourages calls for "Death to Israel" and "Death to America," and casts a cloak of religious darkness while obsessively pursuing, outwardly at least, a single goal – the construction of a nuclear superpower.

Safe driving

At the very same time the whole world was reporting the blast at an Iranian nuclear site, and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was offering up his usual rant against Israel and the United States over the weekend, Tehran's rich kids were taking advantage of the sunny weather to rub up against one another in skimpy bathing suits in the pool and throw private parties in the penthouses of the city's high-class apartment blocks and the yards of the capital's fancy villas.

The whiskey and vodka flowed like water, in absolute breach of the Islamic laws in place in the country – and a violation for which others are likely to receive heavy prison sentences, at best, if caught in the act.

In recent months, photographs documenting Tehran's high life have been appearing on social media websites, and Instagram in particular. One Facebook account, Rich Kids of Tehran, actually mimics Facebook groups with similar names from New York and Beverly Hills.

“We made this page to show that Iran isn’t always bad. It is really good," wrote one of the young Iranians who posted photographs of the parties to Facebook. "But some (of the Internet surfers) are messed up and cheap. They write bad things and a lot of people copy our page. But it’s not important … They can suck it."
[Charming]

An Instagram account launched a month ago under the same name also documents the life of luxury and lifestyle of the sons and daughters of Tehran's wealthy elite. "There are people who have money and there are rich people. We're talking about a completely different lifestyle," said one of the posts.

This sentence, more than anything else, appears to represent the exaggerated ostentatiousness of the photographs. And it wasn't long before the account amassed some 30,000 followers, who receive dozens of pictures of young women proudly displaying the results of their recent nose surgery, and young men showing off in their shiny Porsches and Lamborghinis in the wealthy suburbs of Elahiyeh and Fereshteh. Most of the young men and women are the children of Iran's business and military elite, and the pictures they post are light years away from the image the country has in the global media and the eyes of most of the public in the West.

An American journalist of Iranian descent wrote a piece about the phenomenon for the Al-Monitor website a few days ago, and confirmed that all the photographs were indeed taken in Iran, and in Tehran in particular. And based on these pictures, Iran appears to have become one of the biggest markets for high-end luxury and sports cars from Europe and the United States – and that the market is booming despite the international sanctions.

According to The Times, when sports car manufacturer Porsche came out with its classic 911 model two years ago, two Iranian companies with ties to the Revolutionary Guard Corps rushed to order 1,400 of the cars to sell to the thirsty market of Iran's wealthy. Porsche rejected the order, as it had only manufactured 1,911 models. Nevertheless, according to The Economist weekly, Porsche "sold more cars in Tehran in 2011 than in any other city in the Middle East."

Like their peers in the West, these young Iranians are unapologetic for their massive wealth in the form of Maseratis, Ferraris, Rolex watches, expensive whiskeys, plastic surgeries and what appears to be a huge celebration of Western culture in its extreme form.

The right connections

Together with the Likes and numerous compliments, these 20-something Iranians also come in for a fair amount of flak, and not necessarily from the conservatives – who view the phenomenon as an abomination and would be happy to bury these social media accounts and their creators in a deep, dark hole – but also from regular Iranian citizens who oppose the flashy lifestyle and bad taste. Over the past two years or so, most of the residents of the Islamic Republic have been struggling to survive under the harsh regimen of economic sanctions imposed by the international community on Iran in light of its refusal to forgo its nuclear program.

At first, the sanctions were aimed only at the leaders of the regime; but they have been extensively widened since, and the economic damage has long been unbearable and affects almost all sectors of the population. The only ones to remain unaffected, or so it seems, are the wealthiest one-percenters – those people who hold the reins of industry, the large business corporations, the military and the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and manage to provide their children with a life of luxury while the rest of the country crumbles under the economic crisis.

The Instagram account managers are sensitive to the issue and aware of the storm that broke out in the wake of the flashy photographs. "Every country has its rich and poor," they wrote. "We know that it can be emotionally difficult for some people who don't have the ability to live the kind of life that is documented in the pictures, but you don't have to follow us too."

Behind the walls of their homes, The Times reports, the Iranian rich kids also indulge in alcohol and drugs, which they obtain illegally from numerous sources and far from the watchful eye of Big Brother – members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and other regime officials, those same officials who repeatedly arrest and humiliate young Iranians who don't toe the line in terms of their appearance, clothing or behaviour. Just a month ago, six young Iranians were sentenced to six months in jail and 91 lashings apiece for filming themselves on the roofs of Tehran in a video clip of Pharrell Williams' well-known song, Happy.

Are the regime authorities really unaware of what is going on under their very noses? The answer in all likelihood is no. The pictures raise suspicions that the sons and daughters of Iran's wealthy are immune, too, to the long and oppressive arm of the regime, which may fear a confrontation with the country's tycoons. And thus the rich kids of Iran are able to party on without punishment.

Kudos to Daniel Batini. He may consider doing a follow-up on this article focusing on the actual Beverly Hills, 90210 – the Iranian-American “Jewish Ghetto” of Los Angeles.

The funny thing about Iran’s Western-educated “new guard/ruling elite” is that shortly after the infamous “glorious” revolution of 1979 and the Hostage Crisis they expected their former American classmates’ (whom had inspired them with their massive anti-war Vietnam era protests) full-fledged support and approval. They were shocked to discover that Americans were actually (and understandably) repulsed and horrified.

Basically, the same left-wing presstitutes who’d ostensibly been supportive of the “plight of the people” against the “ruthless dictator,” in one fell swoop pulled the proverbial Persian rug out from under “the people” and went into def-con 1 demonization mode. Somebody somewhere got the “last” laugh. When asked by their kids as to what the revolution was all about and why they supported it...crickets.

Immediately after the Godforsaken revolution the mullah fanatics were hell-bent on destroying all of Iran’s pre-Islamic artifacts; literature, transcripts, architecture, etc. When the “holy” warriors approached Persepolis with bulldozers a rag-tag band of local villagers stopped them dead in their tracks. And it will be the lower middle class rural villages of Iran that will eventually produce its next generation of capable leaders. I know they’re out there.

While the ruling class is busy “morality policing” the society at large, their own children practice debauchery and hedonism. And mind you these were the people who were castigating the Shah for allegedly being decadent and out of touch. Their kids aren’t fit to rule themselves let alone the country. How can you have a ruling class without class?

Although I hate to generalize them, these koskhols fall under 2 categories;